Prowling around the web while taking a break, I stumbled across some interesting information on the Republican Presidential nomination that I figured I'd pass along.

If I'm reading the most recent set of polls correctly, it looks like the major impact of a Fred Thompson entry into the race for the Republican nomination would be to draw from John McCain. In fact, the RCP Poll average has Thompson now leading McCain and eyeballing the chart it looks like Thompson's recent rise in the poll largely mirrors McCain's fall.

Of course, this is all national data. Polls in Iowa and New Hampshire look somewhat different, as Romney does much better in those state polls than nationwide (John Edwards has a similar scenario on the Democratic side in Iowa).

The 2000 Census revealed that, between 1995 and 2000 alone, 308,000 people moved from New York to Florida -- the largest state-to-state flow in the U.S. At last count, nearly 1.5 million Floridians were born in New York, including five members from Florida's current House delegation. Two are Democrats born in Queens: Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Robert Wexler. The three Republicans were born outside New York City: Ginny Brown-Waite was born in Albany, John Mica in Binghamton and Dave Weldon in Amityville.

Assuming Florida is a key battleground state again, the Florida-New York connection is an interesting wild card in the Presidential election for Rudy (as well as Hillary Clinton presumably, but to a lesser extent). Moreover, this raw number of immigrants may understate the New York influence on Florida--my in-laws, for instance, are NYC-Florida snowbirds who hold Florida as their primary residence. They don't seem atypical in this. Many Floridians seem to remain very attached to New York, even going so far as to maintain their allegiance to the Knicks, a demonstration of how deep their roots run.

Thompson is also now trading at the highest price on Intrade . There too McCain's stock appears to be falling. I wasn't able to find a prospectus on him in the Iowa Electronic Market, so unless I missed it, he is still in the Rest of Field there.

It looks to me like Giuliani and McCain have fallen roughly in parallel, proportionately with Thompson's rise, in the RCP polls. Except for a recent rise, Giuliani actually seems to have fallen more than McCain since the Thompson surge.

Using a George Will analogy, Thompson definitely seems to be the internet stock of the field. I thought that Republicans were unhappy with their choices, but Thompson vaulting into 1st place without a headline issue, particularly strong resume or huge name id vaults the bases feelings to more along the lines of despair.

If NY will have an influence on Giuliani's numbers in Florida, does it follow that NY itself will have high numbers for Giuliani? NYers love Giuliani but NY is very blue. It had not occurred to me that NY could go red in '08 until someone was asking me about it on the plane the other day. NYers really love him, but as a mayor, right, not as a president. That was my assumption. And if its Hillary/Giuliani then one must ask how much NY loves her.

So, unless its predominantly red NY that moves to Florida, presumably the effect will eb the same just watered down. Of course if Florida is a major battleground state then it would just be a slight shift - so if blue NY goes slightly purple for Giuliani and a watered down reddening makes it to Florida then I guess this could be enough to tip the balance. However if Giuliani can't scrape away very much due to a love of Hillary, then it would not have any effect. I guess the presumption is that love of Giuliani can at least have a tinting effect and this would rub off in Florida.

People who left NYC in the mid-90s are a different constituency from those who lived there during Rudy's second term. Rudy's popularity in NYC declined sharply between 1997 and 2001, and he didn't get as much of a 9/11 boost here as he did in the rest of the country. I predict NY to stay blue in '08 regardless.

Ron Paul is certainly an interesting case. He wins every poll on the internet, yet he comes out in low single digits for every rigorous poll. I'm not aware of any case where such a discrepancy exists. If Ron Paul got a little bit more notice, I think his numbers could really improve.

Maybe so. But Giuliani could force a Democratic nominee to spend a lot more time and money in NY than he would otherwise. Having to play defense in a deep blue state would presumably detract from the offense in battleground states.

I don't know--it seems to me that Thompson's entry just happened to coincide with the furor over the immigration bill, and that may be the better explanation of McCain's fall in the polls. Indeed, my eyeball says McCain's downward trend began well before Thompson's upward trend.

For much of the nation, Giuliani and Romney look too much like northeastern dem stock. Time will tell, but I still think McCain has the best chance of any GOPer of winning a general election. Still knows policy and can talk back. Too bad he's not fresh or pretty enough, and still pisses off people with stupid jokes and too much honesty.

In the Republican NH debate, Giuliani asserted with a straight face that the US needed to invade Iraq as part of the War on Terror. I would think that such flagrant idiocy would support from a considerable percentage of Republicans.

In the Republican NH debate, Giuliani asserted with a straight face that the US needed to invade Iraq as part of the War on Terror. I would think that such flagrant idiocy would lose him support from a considerable percentage of Republicans.

It seems intuitively correct that Fred Thompson would gain most of his support at the expense of John McCain, some at the expense of Rudy Giuliani, and very little at the expense of Mitt Romney. It seems to me that a Thompson supporter would be much more similar to a McCain one than either to a Giuliani or Romney one.

Ron Paul has zero chance of getting the Republican nomination regardless of what the internet polls say. I even think his presidential run will make his Congressional seat very iffy if he chooses to run for it in 2008.

Giuliani would make New York interesting even if he were facing Hillary Clinton. Even though people from upstate New York rarely support politicians from the city, in a Giuliani-Clinton contest, those voters would be faced with what are essentially two city politicians. Given that Giuliani is an actual New Yorker and a Republican, I think upstate voters would overwhelmingly support him. If he were to be able to make it closer in the city than other Republicans have in the past, it could make the national race very interesting. That would be the equivalent of a Democratic candidate forcing a Republican to battle over Georgia. As for the Florida angle, I don't see it having that large of an effect. Florida was close in 2000 primarily due to low voter turnout. I don't see the New York snowbirds being able to swing the election one way or the other in a high voter turnout contest like we should have next year.

I was going more for the likelihood of a state crossing party lines than the effect on the electoral college. I don't think New York is as rigidly Democratic as some commenters here seem to think.

Unlike many other Democratic states in the Northeast, New York still has a significant white, rural population, which typically votes Republican. Pennsylvania is another example of this. Although Pennsylvania is always more in play than New York.

I think Georgia is similar to New York in this regard simply because it has a higher percentage of urban residents than other Southern states, which is a similar situation from the Republican side. Although, North Carolina may soon overtake Georgia as the least safe Southern state for the Republicans.

In this regard I think Texas would be closer to California than New York. These are states that would be very unlikely to flip. Then you have your "only in a complete landslide would they flip" states like Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Utah, and Idaho.

Ron Paul is an odd type of RINO. Remember, he's a refugee from the Libertarian Party, who decided he could do more to influence debate by putting on the Republican banner. He still holds true to some goofy LP tenets - he's a staunch open borders guy at a time when most serious Republicans are more concerned with border security. He's also very pacifistic; not only was he against the Iraq war, but he opposed the one in Afghanistan as well.

Camille Paglia does not seem all that impressed by Thompson: "Right now, the Democrats' best hope may be for the Republicans to veer right and nominate an erratic aging boy like the seedy Newt Gingrich or a Hollywood caricature of vintage 1910 American small-town life like the phlegmatically pithy Fred Thompson, whose homespun act feels tired and looks tired."